This invention relates to a tomato harvester sorting system.
Originally, mechanically harvested tomatoes were hand sorted. After the vines had been severed near their roots, the vines elevated and shaken, and the tomatoes detached from them, the vines were disposed of, and the tomatoes were collected and conveyed on one or more horizontal sorting belts past a long line of workers, typically a dozen or more at each sorting belt, each of whom would do his best to remove culls. In systems in which loose tomatoes were picked up along with dirt and clods, the loose dirt was separated from the clods, and then, as in U.S. Pat. No. 3,986,561, the loose tomatoes and clods were elevated to a horizontal conveyor, from which one or more persons would remove good quality tomatoes and put them on the main sorting conveyor with the other good tomatoes.
Recently, electromechanical sorters have come into use. A typical such electromechanical sorter discriminates by skin color between green tomatoes and red ones and electronically actuates a mechanical system for ejecting gree tomatoes into a cull chute, while red ones pass on to the harvester output. While such electromechanical sorters work very well and have considerably sped up harvesting, they are not perfect. For example, they pass overripe red tomatoes instead of rejecting them. Moreover, when a large amount of green leaves or stems are mixed in with the tomatoes to be sorted, the green of the stems tends to cause the sorter fingers to move to a reject position so that red tomatoes entangled in or following very closely on the green leaves or stems may therefore be sent to the cull chute. Hence, it is desirable to get rid of stems and leaves, as much as feasible, before the tomatoes are electronically sorted.
Another problem that has arisen with electromechanical sorters is that, while they are very efficient, they sometimes do not remove all the green tomatoes, as when the quantity of tomatoes passing through the sorter is so large that the rejection device cannot reject all the green tomatoes guickly enough.
Another problem with machines having electromechanical sorters is, that if one is to combine them with hand sorting to remove green leaves and stems and overripe tomatoes, then a very compact arrangement has to be made if one is to avoid having to extend the length of the harvester frame. Extension of the frame is expensive, because it adds considerable weight and length; it is also undesirable because too long a frame has too long a turning radius. A great deal of money can be saved by having the sorting system compact, since the determining factor of the length of such tomato harvesters, at least of the efficient ones to which this invention is directed, is the length of the sorting system.
A factor affecting the length of the sorting system is the amount of space it takes to accommodate the clod conveyor and the person assigned to remove good tomatoes from the clod conveyor usually the clod conveyor has run rearwardly and has taken up a substantial amount of space.
The invention is directed to the solution of all these problems. It is also directed to a system which imparts additional efficiency to the hand sorting portion of the complete sorting process; it is intended to improve the combination of hand sorting withe electromechanical sorting.
Other objects and advantages of the invention will appear from the following description.